Shirebrook Tales

Groo and Rayna face the Watery Grave trap, a room with a dropping floor that fills with water.

The room is guarded by a giant octopus. It’s had one of it’s eyes carved out and replaced with a metal lockbox that’s enchanted to keep it alive. Groo and Rayna keep the box as a souvenir.

In the central room, they make short work of an automaton on the Mossy Catwalk, retrieving the final key.

The three keys open the Abyss Room. It’s a narrow, rickety bridge across a seemingly bottomless abyss. Voices come up from it, whispering from the depths, though only the person on the bridge can hear them. (It’s actually just an illusion.)

Finally they reach the Temple of the Black Pearl. Moira picks up the pearl and it instantly sucks the flesh from under her skin and the eyes out of her head. The zombies outside start howling and Moira is talking in the tongue of the ancients who built the ruins.

Rayna slaps the pearl out of Moira’s hands, granting her a brief vision of an army of Lovecraftian horrors marching towards some vast, mountain-sized monstrosity.

The pearl shatters. The temple begins to collapse. Groo throws Moira over his shoulder and the group runs out.

Kelley is nowhere to be seen. He was hiding in the museum when they went past and took off before they did when the whole place started to shake.

Outside the zombies are all de-animated.

Moira awakens, shaken but otherwise all right. The group returns to Shirebrook.

Moira and Declan decide that that was the end of their adventuring career. They plan to open a school and library in the town.

Groo and Rayna decide to stick around, but are in need of cash. They plan on picking up a job guarding a small trade caravan headed for Anvil.

Groo, Rayna, and Declan arrive at the ruins. Declan recognizes a few landmarks from Moira’s notebook, and eventually leads them to an underground tunnel entrance.

The tunnel is surrounded by a circling mass of 100+ zombies! They all seem attracted to the tunnel entrance but can get no closer than about 50’ to it.

Groo uses his knowledge of stonework to knock down the wall of a nearby building, clearing a section of the zombie horde out just long enough for them to dash through.

First room is a trapped tile floor. Kelley’s two bandits are there dead. Moira is there too, still alive. They rescue her and decide to go in, to ensure Kelley doesn’t get the pearl.

Next they encounter a locked room trap. They’re unable to break free but, after sounding an alarm (there’s no one left alive down here to hear it) it resets and frees them.

Next is the main chamber, a huge spherical copper room crisscrossed with catwalks. There’s a key dangling in the center, plus three other doors out, one of which has three keyholes. They enter one of the side chambers first.

This is the Fiery Treadmill Trap, a room with a sliding floor that moves them towards a wall of flame. Groo and Rayna defeat a pair of flying swords, which serve as the triggers to disarm the trap and release the key here.

On the way to the ruins, Groo, Moira, and Declan are attacked by a wolf and a warg, which they defeat.

They find the bandit camp. After fighting the bandits outside the camp, Rayna is incapacitated. Groo bursts into the tent were Kelley, along with two more bandits, is holding Moira at crossbow-point. Groo tries to trade the notebook for Moira, but Kelley double-crosses him and shoots him.

Declan keeps Rayna and Groo alive through the night. In the morning they head to the ruins to find Moira.

Rayna gets tracked down by the Guild. She owes a lot of money (10K gold and the vig is running), and Vinnie the Stick wants to collect. She’s ready to flee. Contacted by Gullivar Moon, asks her to look after his kids in Shirebrook.

Groo is fed up at home. Gets a message from the kids of his friend Gullivar, Moira and Declan, asking for help with a treasure-seeking adventure. He packs up and heads for Shirebrook.

Rayna arrives, tracks down the kids. She heads to the Old Reliable Tavern and talks to Regina Stoat; she’s renting them a cabin. Rayna heads there, but the door is busted in and there’s someone inside.

Groo arrives in Shirebrook. Morris Stoat tells him that his sister Regina is renting them a cabin. When he arrives, the door has been kicked in, and he goes in to investigate.

Groo and Rayna meet. They find Gullivar’s son Declan, a young cleric, trapped under a bookcase. He and his sister, a wizard named Moira, were attacked by thugs. Declan was stabbed but managed to heal himself before passing out.

Moira and Declan were researching a giant black pearl hidden somewhere in the great ruined city. Moira was a little too loud about in Anvil, and the bandit leader Kelley overhead them, followed them home to Shirebrook, and kidnapped Moira, leaving Declan for dead.

Bandits attack! Groo kills one spectacularly. Rayna apprehends the other alive. He tells them they were there for Moira’s notebook. Moira, thinking Declan dead, spilled her guts. She needs her notebook to track down the pearl though.